“Solo-Sex Can Keep You from Becoming a Nazi,” Science Says
If You Stop Doing Something Destructive You Might Turn Into David Duke, explains NPR
Every now and then, especially when I feel tempted to despair, I stumble over something that warms the cockles of my cold, cynical heart. Today it has come from a most unexpected place—mainstream news, if that’s still what it’s being called. Not to raise our collective hopes too high, it was encouraging to me in the opposite way intended. The writer/podcaster is horrified by the existence of something that shows there is hope for humanity as a whole, and many individual people along the way.
The news organization is National Public Radio, and the phenomenon they set out to describe is a growing “movement” of men who are trying to cease the use of pornography and the thing that pornography generally leads to—masturbation. Just before I say anymore, let me confess that I find this whole subject extremely embarrassing, and it is only because the article so amused me that I am enduring the horror of the subject.
How or why is the article amusing? Well, because whoever the podcaster is (I didn’t listen, they helpfully provided a long text form underneath from which I’ve been able to excerpt portions) seems appalled at the idea that it might be good for men not to look at the one and do the other. It is as though she wanders up to a large fence standing in the middle of a field and is appalled that no one has yet torn it down. Worse, a whole lot of men are busily building extra bits onto it and making it taller. ‘Hey,’ she calls, ‘that’s dangerous, do you have a doctor’s permission to do that?’ and all the men just pretend like they can’t even hear her.
Two fascinating thoughts emerge for me out of this article. First—and I say this merely as an observation and not to judge it right or wrong—the generation of “the science” seems to be passing away. The way science is appealed to throughout the piece is with an air of hysteria mingled with lamentation. Which, I understand. When anything begins to fade away, those who love it best will be the most heartbroken. Our whole world has been built by appeals to science and data. To discover that those things aren’t sufficient to govern the world, nor the individual people in it must be a difficult thought to process. This article feels like a cry of dereliction for “the science.” Second, though, as a good Christian I am prepared to mourn with those who mourn, it is heartening to see some measure of reality, however ephemeral, asserting itself in the midst of Clown World, even without all the data and facts Clown World thinks it has a right to demand.
The piece is quite long, so don’t worry, we won’t go line by line. The writer of the piece is someone named Lisa Hagen. She sets the mood straight away [emphasis mine]:
More than two decades of growing internet use has surfaced fears about the social and psychological impacts of nearly unfettered access to pornography. But many researchers and sex therapists worry that the online communities that have formed in response to these fears often endorse inaccurate medical information, exacerbate mental health problems and, in some cases, overlap with extremist and hate groups.
I’m going to pause here and remind you to go read Louise Perry’s The Case Against the Sexual Revolution: A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century which amasses all the data NPR struggled so hard to uncover such that they gave up and assumed it doesn’t even exist. Reasonable science-loving people who are not white supremacists and have no ties to David Duke still have no ethically—neither in a faith nor a secular use of that word—justified reason for looking at pornography. There is no ethical use of pornography. When you add the Christian question over the top, of course it becomes even more a thing you should try very hard not to do. I linked it a while ago, but this article is so good.
I wish I could soothe the furrowed brow of these “many researchers and sex therapists.” What are they so anxious about? The low birth rate? The destruction of human relationships? How narrow and terrible the world has become for men and women? No, no, they’re worried about, well, I’ll let Hagan explain:
There are many variations on how and why members of these communities choose to abstain from masturbation. One of the central concepts in these communities is known as "nofap," a play on an onomatopoeic word for masturbation popularized on the notorious 4chan message boards.
I had never heard of this term and am not going to investigate it. As I said, the subject is extremely embarrassing for me. I’m only here for the spiritual ratio, as it were. This next line is just wonderful:
The term "nofap" has come to encompass a set of unproven claims that not masturbating confers social and health benefits.
Um, there is information out there about how not doing that does confer a lot of social and health benefits, and, importantly, how the whole industry that produces this way of life is so bad for women. I’m surprised NPR wasn’t able to find any of it. We carry on:
There's a large and active forum on Reddit that uses the name, as well as a company called NoFap LLC, which offers support groups for a fee and runs a popular forum on its website. But that company is just one part of a far larger community. Others, including self-styled coaches, also use the term. They offer advice, services and sometimes treatment programs to those struggling to reach their goal of not masturbating. While some figures in this space are religious, most frame their advice as science-based forms of self-improvement or as a cure for pornography addiction, a popular concept that's disputed by scientists and researchers who study sexuality.
How come the coaches are “self-styled” but the scientists and researchers “who study sexuality” are taken as a given? I’d like to know more about them. There is just as much stuff on the internet about the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the institutions that produce these “scientists and researchers” as there is about what porn does to people. I’m really bad at googling and even I’m aware of how much corruption there is. Here’s another fun bit, emphasis, as usual, mine:
Measuring the online and offline influence of nofap content is difficult. A 2022 study in the International Journal of Impotence Research by a group of urologists who studied social media content found "semen retention" and its related hashtags to be the most popular men's health topic on TikTok and Instagram. Unlike every other men's health topic they studied, none of the semen retention posts were coming from doctors.
None at all! So some men who are trying to encourage each other to do something good did not first consult the physicians who—I can’t believe this could even be a thing—would say that using pornography for the purpose of the thing we’re talking about don’t know that it’s a bad thing? Doctors, who have to study a lot, should know it’s bad. If you have to explain to them why, they are not good doctors.
NPR did find someone to talk to who had a little vague inkling about the state of things, but not so blinding that it led them to any further investigation on the part I’m going to italicize and bold here:
To her, the popularity of nofap ideas indicates a failure by the traditional medical establishment to serve the many people experiencing real concerns around sexual health, performance and desire.
Here’s another sane bit:
NPR has reached out to Rhodes and his company multiple times, but they never accepted an interview or responded to specific requests for comment.
They probably knew talking to said podcaster was a lose-lose situation. It isn’t worthwhile to talk to someone who already knows the answers to all these particular questions and has judged you to be wrong even before you start speaking. Would that any Christian influencers could learn this lesson and stop doing interviews for media outlets that think their moral positions on things necessary turn them into racists. Oh well.
NPR has discovered the manosphere, hysteria and flapping ensue:
Scholars who study the nofap world note that it emerged alongside what's called the manosphere, a collection of online spaces devoted to the idea that men are under threat from feminism and modern life. That view thrives offline as well.
I love how they dispatch such an enormous trouble that has occupied thoughtful people for 100 years at least with one strike to the keyboard. This is the point where I will remind you to read Nancy Pearcey’s The Toxic War on Masculinity as well as any number of other discussions on this subject which are available wherever books are sold, which I guess must be Amazon, sigh.
Anyway, having got over the flapping, NPR is determined to show how this bad group that is trying to get men to take responsibility, at least over this one area of life, is the slippery slope into radical white-wing antisemitic extremism. The way these bad men do it is by holding up abstinence as a cure for other ailments:
In masturbation abstinence groups, the ubiquity of internet porn is often framed as a major factor in this alleged decline, and abstaining from masturbation is held up as the cure.
It’s fun that they’re willing to admit that it’s ubiquitous. That means it is almost impossible to get away from, even if you want to. Is no one at NPR interested in why it is ubiquitous? How bout the effect it has on women? What about society as a whole? No curiosity on any of those points? Sigh.
But who thought of this crazy idea that men might do better if they didn’t do that (besides Christians)??
Ideas about masturbation abstinence got a big boost from the man who interviewed Rhodes on the radio in 2012 — Gary Wilson. Wilson, a former massage therapy instructor in Oregon who died in 2021, ran a website called yourbrainonporn.com. While he was neither a medical doctor nor a Ph.D. scientist (he was an adjunct biology instructor at Southern Oregon University for a combined four months in 2005 and 2010), he had given a viral TEDx talk arguing that internet porn is a hazard for men's brains.
I think it’s interesting that personal experience is the alpha and omega of authority unless he is an uncredentialed man who thinks he would like to convince other men not to do something that would really do them good to stop doing. Just remember, if you aren’t a doctor or a Ph.D. you do not have a leg to stand on. Spend a world of money on a degree from somewhere with no moral or ethical underpinning in order to someday have the credibility to do a TED talk.
Speaking of TED talks, this seems like a good time to remember that Brene Brown has a Ph.D. and is famous because of her TED talk but whose research is extremely light and fluffy and full of confirmation bias and in many cases is so contrary to the gospel that to follow it would cause severe and uncomfortable spiritual dissonance for the true Christian.
Anyway, back to NPR. They dug up some people who used to go to the nofap site but stopped because they didn’t like it anymore. One such person fell into a guilt spiral. It took him a lot of time to get away from all that toxic moralism. Now [emphasis mine]
He doesn't look at nofap content anymore, and he feels comfortable with the amount of porn he watches. More recently, he got off his ADHD medication and realized it had been causing his erectile dysfunction, not pornography. Now 24, he looks back at his time with these ideas and wishes he hadn't spent so much of high school stressed out about masturbation.
That’s special. I wish he didn’t feel comfortable with any amount of porn use because it’s not good for him or the people he watches.
At this point, the article wanders around in a haze of confusion about the meaning of the word “Addiction.” Even though a lot of men self-report an addiction to pornography, it is mainly because they have spent too much time around Christians who said not to do it, and other kinds of judgmental places like this nofap group. I won’t bore us all by going through it. What’s more exciting is how, if you don’t look at enough porn, you are in serious peril of turning into a white supremacist:
“We have historical evidence that white supremacist groups from 100 years ago were instructing men that they shouldn't masturbate in order to sort of maintain their virility and strength," said Burke. "And then we see these messages being repeated in the present day. Proud Boys tells its members that they should not look at pornography and discourages masturbation."
Is it just me, or does it seem like maybe NPR is losing the thread? Seriously, they insist, if you go on that site, it will literally be the end of the world:
McInnes also interviewed Wilson, who did the viral TEDx talk about porn addiction. White nationalist David Duke has recommended Wilson's presentation on his blog, where he made unfounded, antisemitic claims that pornography is a Jewish plot to undermine white men.
Speaking as a woman, and a Christian, I just want to say to all the men out there that if you want to not do this thing anymore, almost all the women in the world, except the ones who write for NPR will not think you are about to fall into the pit of antisemitism. It’s possible for wrong people to be right one percent of the time. It’s possible to be wrong about the origins of pornography and still right that it’s bad to do it.
This group is so bad, apparently, that when NPR tried to get comments from them, they accused NPR of grifting for the porn industry:
In response to requests for comment, the NoFap account on X, formerly Twitter, falsely accused NPR of creating a hit piece on behalf of the porn industry, a recurring response to journalists or researchers taking a critical look at the group.
Goodness, I wasn’t sure I would make it through the whole thing. As I said, I’m not good at googling, but there is so much thoughtful and good writing out there about this issue. If anyone wants to post links in the comments for further reading, that would be fab.
And I don’t want, of course, to make anyone feel condemned. The warnings the church offered about the porn industry—the very fact it’s called that should make NPR wonder to itself about more things—turned out to be too tepid and meek. They could have been even more strident, for it has been more destructive than even they could have imagined Of course, it’s not good to be legalistic and judgmental, but if someone is warning you against something, even harshly, it is because they love you and don’t want you to be destroyed. Being upset that they were shouting at you in a loud voice to stop as you were about to run over a cliff is the wrong response. Though your feelings may have been hurt, yet you were alive.
I’m not at all suggesting Christians adopt a harsh and condemnatory tone towards people caught in the clutches of this ruinous way of life. But as we are surrounded by people whose lives and marriages are destroyed by sexual sin, though it might turn us all into David Duke and Hiter, I don’t think now is the time to stop talking about it, nor the everlasting love of God who came and died for those caught in the grip of any sin. If you go to him, whether you are the man or the young lady with an only-fans, he will accept you and forgive you and heal you and make you whole.
Also, my goodness, how tone-deaf. Could NPR really be so completely out of touch? Wow.
Well anyway, have a nice day!
My first thought was: Why do Lisa Hagen and NPR care so much what other people do in the privacy of their own homes?
It used to be that these sorts of "Progressives" protested quite loudly against ethical crusaders intruding into the bedrooms of "consenting adults." But now, apparently, this kind of intrusion is allowed, so long as you are intruding to assure sin and create more. It's kind of like an Ethical Diode ... it only works in one direction. You cannot be all up in other people's business if your goal is to urge them to stop sinning, but it you're doing it to urge them to sin more, all is well.
Just a reminder that your taxes pay for NPR.